


I Leave This at Your Ear

by Dorian



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Getting Back Together, Sex in the Trailer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-30 01:04:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12642993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorian/pseuds/Dorian
Summary: They sort of break up again on February 17 and definitely get back together on March 15. They barely talk between “the Valentine's Day massacre and the ides of the March,” he jokes later, sitting next to her in a booth at Pop’s and hoping that she’ll slide closer to rest her head on his shoulder like she used to.





	I Leave This at Your Ear

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my amazing betas, soyforramen and bewarethesmirk, who made this story immeasurably better.

They sort of break up again on February 17 and definitely get back together on March 15. They barely talk between “the Valentine's Day massacre and the ides of the March,” he jokes later, sitting next to her in a booth at Pop’s and hoping that she’ll slide closer to rest her head on his shoulder like she used to.

She doesn’t. But she takes his hand.

Betty strikes a bargain with him in the first week after they’re official again: they won’t celebrate his birthday as long as they start skipping Valentine's Day, too.

 _It was never about Valentine's Day_ , he wants to say. But then it was never really about his birthday either.

 

 

 

Last week’s snow lingers on the north edges of buildings and in dirty, packed-hard piles near the ends of driveways. Over the last few days the air has lost the worst of its damp, brutal edge. By the trailer park fence, small purple and white flowers spill down the side of rotted out wooden planters abandoned long ago.

He’s walking past the faded Sunnyside Trailer Park sign when his phone vibrates in his pocket. A hot-cold rush coils up tight in his chest when he sees Betty’s name.

Jughead swipes to pick up and says, “Hey.”

“Jug.”

He thinks stupidly of repeating, _hey_ , then thinks of asking if she needs something—except he gets a flicker of warning that the question would come out wrong, like she needs a reason to call.

The quiet fumbles along between them. Background noise filters over the line: a confusion of distant voices and a single muffled car horn.

“Practice just finished,” Betty offers. “V’s giving me a ride home. She’s calling a car.”

He's never bothered to work out the details of Veronica’s endless supply of mysterious black cars. They’re just part of the Veronica Lodge brand of magical realism: best simply accepted.

But the oddity catches at him, since Betty has never liked asking for favors and, though it’s cold out, the sky is a clear sweep of blue.

“Everything all right?”

“Yeah, of course.” He can hear Betty blow out a steadying breath. “I took a fall at practice. It's nothing, just a few bruises. I could walk home. I’m okay.”

But her voice is too flat as though, after everything in the last six months, she is no longer calibrated to register this scale of hurt.

“The more you say you're fine, Betts, the less I believe you.”

She gives a short, breathy laugh, the one that tends to land between a giggle and a scoff.

“Jug, I’m fine. The fall looked worse than it was. But if Veronica wants to drop me off at home, she can. She'll feel better.”

Jughead pictures her standing on the top of the steps leading out of Riverdale High in the cool cast of afternoon light, waiting for a car she doesn't want. But then he considers how observant Veronica can be when she isn't distracted and how far Betty will stretch the edges of _I’m fine_.

What kind of fall looks worse than it is, he wonders.

“You're really all right?”

“Yeah. I was just calling to say hi. Hang on.” Muffled voices overlap and then Betty's back on. “I should go.”

He nods to himself. “Okay. I’ll call you later.”

A silence spins out to fill the space where Betty would have once given an easy hum of agreement or, near the end, one of those mournful _I love yous_.

He's about to hang up when he hears her voice again.

“Hey, Jug.”

“Yeah?” Another pause stretches out, but this one doesn't feel so heavy. He knocks the side of his boot against the wooden post holding up the trailer park sign.

“This weekend.” She trails off. A choppy truck engine approaches and fades along the unseen road that runs south of the trailer park. “My parents will be gone some. They’re leaving Friday after work.”

Before, inviting her over would have been like nothing. Jughead arranges and listens to the words in his head twice before he can manage, “Want to come over?”

A handful of heartbeats lurch past before Betty gives a quiet, firm, “Yes.”

 

 

 

He calls her after school on Wednesday from the Red and Black’s office-slash-darkroom, tipping his chair back and staring at the silver coffeemaker she’d brought over that he’d kept on using most school days even when they weren’t talking. He hasn’t turned up any new leads. Nothing about the fundamentals of Southside High has changed and his classes are boring, so he tells her about the new, unexpectedly high brow graffiti that repeats down all the lockers in the main hallway: _but is it art? but is it art? but is it art?_

Betty doesn’t call on Thursday, but just after eleven she texts him _good night_ with a moon. He watches the typing dots cycle and cycle and then disappear. Nothing else shows up.

 

 

 

Friday morning she texts: _9:30 ok?_

For an insane moment he debates whether he should text back _yes_ , _sure_ or _great_.

He presses his forehead against the kitchen cabinet door, hard, and goes with a thumbs up emoji.

 

 

 

She knocks at about quarter to ten. Jughead takes a breath and, after a moment of deliberation, leaves his beanie on the arm of the couch.

When he opens the door, Betty is staring back down the battered steps. The yellow wash of the porch light turns her a little bit golden and her profile is sharply defined against the surrounding dark. He tries not to think too hard about the last time she was here, how that ended, just how many nights he’s wanted to open the door and see her like this.

“Hey, you.”

She looks up and smiles. “I got Pop’s.” She lifts the white takeout bag towards him.

He shoves down saying _I love you_ , because the words would come out as a joke, and closes his fingers over hers instead of taking the bag. He tugs her a step closer. She tips her face up so he bends down and kisses her, thinking the words in a fast, dizzying loop.

She pulls back with one last brush against his mouth and, after a perfectly dragged out pause, says, “It’s just Pop’s.”

Jughead huffs out a laugh, kisses her forehead and takes the grease-spotted white bag.

“Come on in.”

 

 

 

They eat at the kitchen table off of the paper wrappers. She got him two cheeseburgers, two orders of fries and a strawberry milkshake.

Betty eats her burger fast but picks at her fries as she tells him about school, about the voicemail she got from Polly, about Kevin’s steady hook up and sorta-maybe boyfriend that he’ll talk about only using waspish cynicism or TMI designed to bait her into shutting the topic down.

Betty frowns at her fries like she wants to help Kevin with this problem of being a little fucked up by life and doesn’t know how.

Jughead presses his knee against the side of her leg because she’s already helping more than she knows, but Betty flinches away. “Sorry. Cheerleading.”

The fall.

“I didn’t know it was that bad.”

She shrugs. “I got off pretty easy.”

“‘It could’ve been worse’ wasn’t really the standard I had in mind.”

Betty regards him from across the table and finally says, “Okay.” Only, because she’s Betty Cooper, she has to add, “But I’m—”

“I get it.” He reaches out to steal one of her fries even though he’s not even done with his own yet. “You’re okay.”

She absently tilts her bag of fries towards him a little bit more.

 

 

 

He gathers up the paper wrappers and empty milkshake cups while Betty gets the small pink gym bag she left by the door.

That tethered draw, which can sometimes pull him in so tight, leads him down the hall after her and deposits him with a shoulder propped against the bathroom door that she’s left open as she unpacks a little transparent travel bag that holds a crinkly green packet of wipes she uses to clean her face, a few small bottles and a toothbrush.

Betty takes off her makeup with a white cloth that leaves her skin faintly pink. She tugs the elastic out of her ponytail and rubs her fingers against her scalp, shaking her hair out into waves that settle around her shoulders. He’d stand here and watch her brush her teeth if that didn’t cross the line between a little weird and full on creepy. So he retreats into the kitchen. He closes his laptop but leaves it charging on the kitchen counter, double-checks the deadbolt and then stalls out in the boxy area between the kitchen, the living room and the front door.

He still has some condoms left from before. He assumes she came over for sex, but—Jughead stares up at the ceiling and thinks, _What the fuck do I know?_

 

 

 

He trades places with her in the bathroom to brush his teeth, sliding past her.

When he’s done and opens the door, she’s leaning back against the wall of the narrow hallway, less than two steps away.

All he wants to do is take those couple steps forward, to get back to that lost place where he wouldn’t have thought twice about any of this.

Maybe if she wasn’t banged up, they’d crash into each other with the blurred out rush that comes so easy between them. But what he’s got right now is this: Betty nudging the flannel off his shoulders as he kisses down her neck, Betty tugging his t-shirt up and off as he straightens, Betty staring at his shoulders and chest.

He brings his arms up against the wall to box her in and slows down leaning into her, dragging the motion out so that when he kisses her again she’s smiling a little into the kiss.

Betty’s hands slide down his sides and she tucks her fingers in between his jeans and his hips.

They’re barely even touching and the crazy spun out slowness of what they’re doing twists up how much he wants her tighter and tighter. He thinks he might crawl out of his skin with this frustrated, banked down desire that’s amazing and terrible all at once.

Jughead drops a hand to touch her breast through her sweater and opens his mouth over hers. Her tongue flicks over his lower lip like she knows what he wants but is going to give it to him one piece at a time. And she _does_ bit by bit until at last he’s got her tongue in his mouth and his hand under her shirt and he needs her to not be wearing so many clothes.

He pulls back, skims his hand down the hard curve of her ribs to the edge of her sweater and raises his eyebrows. At her nod he strips off both layers, sweater and cami, and gets his mouth on the soft, warm swell of her breast just above where her bras always cut in a little.

He hears, “Bed. Bed, Juggie, c’mon.” Her voice is pitched so low, rough with how turned on she is, and the sound is like getting kicked in the chest. He wants to scoop her up, his hands under her thighs, her breasts pressed up tight against him, but he remembers her flinch in the kitchen and grabs her hand instead, pulling her back towards his bedroom.

She backs him up against the open door, her lips and then teeth against his jaw, making him lift his chin up for her so she can suck a mark onto his neck. She works at his fly, fumbling because she won’t step away far enough to manage the button on the first go.

He wants her naked—bra, jeans, shoes, panties, all of it. He unclasps and drops her bra, cups both her breasts, pressing in on her nipples because that makes her shoulders draw back and her spine arch.

She uses one foot to push down the stuck leg of her jeans, turning slightly. He sucks in a breath between closed teeth. Dark patches of bruising run from the point of her hip all the way down her right thigh.

Betty kicks her jeans to the side. “It looks worse than it is.”

“You keep saying that,” he reminds her as his hand hovers over her right hip. He settles the pads of his fingers against her black-and-purple skin but she doesn’t tense or flinch. “Don’t let me hurt you.”

Her eyebrows pull together at that.

Betty slides her hands over his stomach and goes up on her toes to press a slow, careful kiss against his mouth.

When she steps back, she nods towards the floor lamp, wanting the lights off. She’s only let him try a few times with more light and each time she’s had trouble coming. He wants to turn on every light in the room, in the whole fucking trailer, to see her spread out naked for him. He can’t understand how she could look like _this_ and find anything to feel self-conscious about. But he reaches over and kills the floor lamp before twisting on the tiny bedside reading light with the dimmer bulb on low.

Jughead sits next to her on the bed and traces his hand up her arm to her shoulder, letting his eyes adjust to the glow of the dialed-back lamp and the fainter light from outside that curls in yellow streaks around the edges of the curtains.

He pulls a condom out from the box tucked under the bed frame and he leaves it on the edge of the bedside table, mostly to reassure her before she has to ask. He kisses her as she sinks onto her elbows, following her down until he’s braced over her and she's lying back on his faded blue-gray sheets.

He takes her in: her pink nipples and pale skin, blonde wavy hair spread out around her face and that gorgeous mouth that he wants to kiss and fuck and have touching his body however she wants and—

She twists and reaches for the side table. The motion creates an amazing dip-flare-curve of her waist to her hip to her ass.

She tears open the packet and rolls the condom on him.

Betty’s hands settle on his hips. Her knees spread for him. And he’s got to kiss her as he leans his weight on one arm and gets between her thighs. He slides his other hand down over her stomach.

Betty shivers under him.

 _Jesus fucking Christ_ , he thinks.

He wants to last, to make this so, so good for her. He wants to feel her arch up as her body tightens and flutters around him. But it's been a long goddamn month and he misremembered how unreal getting inside her is, that hot tight slide, how soft and small and strong she feels under him.

Her legs shift up higher around his waist. Her hand cups the back of his neck and her mouth opens for a blur of messy kisses until she’s so far gone all she can do is press her mouth near his. That cut-off edge of a whine creeps into her breathing on the exhales. Her eyes keep fluttering close when he gets the angle just right only to blink back open to watch his face.

And that’s it. He just _can't_ , can’t slow down or hold back. He gets so deep into her, forehead pressed against her cheek, and everything slams through him all at once. He feels, horribly, almost like crying as Betty presses a line of kisses along his temple while her palms smooth up and down his back.

He pulls himself together at least enough to stop shaking while he ties off and tosses the condom, then gets her off with his fingers curled up into her and his thumb on her clit and his tongue in her mouth. He drags one long kiss along her jaw and presses his mouth against the sensitive skin under her chin when she bows up off the bed for him, flushed and lovely and somehow still his.

He leaves his fingers curled inside her, kissing her mouth, her neck, her face, until she nudges him back with a hand on his chest and a funny little lick across his lips that he thinks she expected him to dart back from. But hell, whatever. She can lick him for all he cares.

They pull apart. He wipes his hand on the sheets he’ll have to wash anyway. When she gets up to use the bathroom, her bruised side is a livid smear of deeper color even in the dim room and the shape imprints on his slow, sex-dazed brain like the lingering afterimage of a camera flash in the dark.

Betty slips back under the covers and curls up against him, in his bed, wrapped up in his arms. He can’t bear to put words to the raw mess that opens up inside his chest as he falls asleep pressed close to her again.

 

 

 

His dreams are strange, but not unhappy.

When he blinks his eyes open, all he’s left with is a jumble of fragmented images that get lost in the morning half-light.

Betty’s palm is fitted against his arm just above his elbow. She’s sitting up with his other pillow between her back and the headboard, reading a dog-eared Sam Shepard anthology— _The Unseen Hand and Other Plays_. He doesn’t know if it’s hers or a library copy.

Betty is wearing the same pale blue sweater as yesterday but has her legs tucked under the blankets for warmth. He watches as she props the spine of the book against her knee and painstakingly turns a page with her thumb.

Under the covers, he slides his hand over to touch the backs of his fingers to the smooth, warm skin of her hip where the line of her panties cuts high up, skimming over the darkest part of the mostly purple bruises.

She blinks and glances down at him. In the hazy morning light, she looks as soft-edged and irrecoverable as a happy memory.

“Hey, sleepyhead.”

He yawns. “Morning.”

She bends down and kisses the corner of his mouth. “You can sleep some more, if you want.”

What he’d like is to make up for last night, maybe even go down on her if she’d let him, but he’s not picking up that vibe from her at all. She seems calm and content. So he shifts forward and presses his face into her side, feeling the warmth of her body through the thin material of her tight sweater, and drifts in and out for a while with her hand slowly moving through his hair.

 

 

 

They get up around ten, since that’s as late as Betty can stay in bed—a solid hour more than he was expecting.

He dumps grounds and water into the coffeemaker on autopilot.

Leaning her unbruised hip against the counter, Betty tugs the sleeves of her sweater further down over her palms and presses her fingers into the fabric rather than her skin. Her knuckles don’t turn white.

He divides his attention between the coffee brewing and Betty’s loosely closed fists.

Jughead puts one spoonful of sugar in Betty’s coffee and leans over to kiss her with all the aching, torn up softness he’s got left before passing her the mug.

“So.” He pulls back and turns to get his own cup of coffee. “I’ve got eggs or cereal. Without milk.”

He's eaten breakfast at the Coopers often enough, those huge plates of pancakes and bacon and breakfast potatoes served out on complicated matching sets of dishes, to brace himself against the flash of shame that heats the back of his neck. The kitchen around him feels abruptly so alien and he’s hit with the memory of that left-out food and rotting dishes smell from visits over the summer when his dad had hit rock bottom again.

He blinks and the memory vanishes. The kitchen is clean, has been for months now.

“I’ll do eggs, you do toast?” Betty offers.

In the light falling through the gauzy curtains, Betty’s hair glows with that cinematic Grace Kelly magic as she peers into the fridge. He wants to wrap his arms around her and press his face into the long curve of her neck.

“Sure,” he says and reaches for the loaf of Wonder bread.

It’s not really a very equitable division of labor as Jughead puts bread in the toaster but doesn’t push the lever down yet. He slumps back against the counter with his coffee to watch Betty stir the eggs, looking so just like herself in the old blue sweater, tight jeans and ponytail that her bare feet stand out with a vivid underscore.

Timing the toast just right flips into a kind of game as he lets his finger hover above the lever. He takes his best guess.

Betty scrapes the eggs onto two plates and sets the pan in the sink to soak. A moment later the toaster dings.

Close enough.

They eat at the table, his back to the door.

“My parents aren’t at a conference,” Betty says out of nowhere.

He looks up. Betty is frowning and running her thumb along the handle of her fork. The stamped metal silverware has sharply defined edges and she’s pressing hard enough to turn her skin white. He touches the back of her hand and laces their fingers together so that their joints form an interlocking row.

Jughead watches her face and waits.

At last, Betty laughs, a hard, unhappy sound. “There just aren’t that many journalistic retreats in Rockland County, Jug. I think it’s become a sort of dare to her, a game of chicken, how crazy of a retreat she can come up with.”

“You know where they really went?”

Betty shakes her head and squeezes his fingers before pulling her hand away. He goes back to eating while she pushes her eggs around on her plate.

Betty swaps their plates as soon as he’s finished and he eats most of her breakfast, too.

 _Waste not, want not_ as his mom used to say with that lost, angry look in her eyes.

He washes the plates and egg pan while Betty showers. He probably should, too, once she’s done.

He isn’t going to. He doesn’t even bother to call himself out on why. He pulls on a clean sweater and jeans with ripped out knees that make Betty’s eyes drift down with the occasional distracted glance as she bites her lower lip. He doesn't know if it’s just the look or if the torn fabric makes her think of what he’d get down on his knees to do for her.

The shower cuts off.

 

 

 

“Want to watch a movie?” Betty asks from the living room. She’s already got his laptop on the coffee table with the power cord plugged behind the couch.

She knows he’s going to say, “Yes.” What she may not know is that he’s going to spend a good ten minutes kissing her first with her settled warm and close in his lap.

He pulls away enough to stare up at her but leaves his hands spread out along her lower back under her shirt. Betty plays with the hair at the nape of his neck.

“So what’s the shortlist, Film Snob?”

 _You pick three, I choose._ He can’t even remember when that became their movie thing.

He thinks of that dog-eared copy of Sam Shepard, of Betty turning the page with one hand. How her wrist pressed against the open page to pin the book in place. How he lost all this.

“Okay. _Blade Runner_ , _Maltese Falcon_ or _Chinatown_?”

Betty tilts her head and her eyes go a little unfocused as she weighs the options.

With a shrug she says, “Chinatown,” and shifts off his lap to curl up against his side as he reaches for his computer.

 

 

 

Roman Polanski may be a piece of shit but Jughead can’t bring himself to stop loving this movie.

 

 

 

Halfway through, Betty takes his hand. As she skims the tips of her fingers along the side of his thumb, her gaze catches on the series of bad, mostly-healed cuts. But she presses her lips together in a tight line and looks back at Jack Nicolson driving through the claustrophobic Hitchcockian orange groves with that ugly white bandage on his nose.

“Betty. Ask me.”

Her eyebrows shoot up and she turns towards him, gazing up at him with those huge, sucker-punch eyes. She doesn't say anything for a beat, like she’s waiting to see if he’ll snatch the words back.

Her eyes drift over his face before she says, “How’d it happen?”

“I had to knock glass out of a broken window. Wrapping your hand in a shirt works a lot better in the movies.”

Her thumb slides just below the deepest cut. “Most things do.”

The wry twist to her voice makes his chest contract with a ripple of unexpected laughter.

“Why were you knocking glass out of a window, Juggie?”

He goes still.

You don’t get do-overs. Jughead knows this. But you can fuck the same thing up over and over and over again until there’s nothing left for you to love or fuck up or even walk away from.

“‘Cause that was the safest way out. Ghoulies were upstairs. We—” He forces himself past the pause. “Sweet Pea, Toni and I were snooping around somewhere. We didn’t want to get caught.”

Betty nods once. He braces himself for more questions—for his stubborn, ruthless Betty to pull the whole story out of him. But all she says is, “I’m glad you got out all right.”

After so long evading first her questions and then more and more often evading _her_ , he shouldn’t feel this sour rush of disappointment when she lets the rest go that easily.

On the laptop screen, Jack Nicholson is knocked out and there’s no objective, god’s-eye view. He’s knocked out and takes the audience with him as the camera fades to black.

 

 

 

The movie lurches through its flurry of final revelations that go nowhere and hurt the wrong people as the powers that be churn indifferently forward.

 

 

 

The credits blur past.

“Want to watch another?” Betty asks, sitting up to stretch out her spine in a rolling curve.

He kisses the high point of her shoulder and thinks, _Man up and take the chance_. Moving slow enough to telegraph his intent, so she can stop him without forcing her to make a big deal out of it, he shifts forward and kneels in front of her. He tugs her to the edge of the couch with his hands cupped behind her knees, watching her face to see if she’ll go for this or if she’ll turn him down.

A dark pink blush spreads over her cheeks and across her forehead. Her eyes go wide but she doesn’t look away or tense up or ask him to stop.

 

 

 

They have sex on the floor in front of the couch because he was feeling lucky enough to slip a condom into his back pocket.

The come down lingers. Sunlight slants in through the gaps where the curtains aren’t drawn together. His knees ache a little from the carpet and his forehead rests on Betty’s shoulder. Her hands can be so gentle sometimes that he short-circuits and all this hurts.

Betty draws his face up and kisses him like she wants him again though he hasn’t even pulled out of her yet.

He deals with the condom and they stumble towards the bedroom, only to get hung up kissing in the kitchen because Betty sitting on the table puts their mouths at just the same level.

Back in his room, she shoves him down on the bed and they fuck again. He falls asleep with his face pressed against Betty’s neck as she traces meandering lines along the arm he’s wrapped tight around her waist.

 

 

 

A little after four, Betty repacks her small pink gym bag, including the toothbrush, because the world is heartless and requires that she do things beyond have sex in this trailer.

Jughead leans his shoulder against the narrow span of wall next to the front door and stares at Betty's mouth, glancing up to catch the soft, bright look in her eyes, and waits for Betty to kiss him.

Her fingertips land against his cheek. He leans forward into her touch.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr at [@burberrycanary](http://clktr4ck.com/qcg8).


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